(ZENIT News / Rome, 15.12.2024).- In December 2024, forty men in the United States face the carrying out of the federal death penalty. Given this prospect, Pope Francis asked President Joe Biden to commute their sentence before his mandate ends in January 2025.
During the Angelus on December 8 in Saint Peter’s Square, the Holy Father said: “Today I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for prisoners condemned to death in the United States. Let us pray for their sentences to be commuted or changed. Let’s think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord to save them from death.”
In 2018, Pope Francis modified a number of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, affirming the Church’s opposition to the death penalty on the basis of human dignity, which is not lost for having committed a serious crime. The new version of number 2267 of the Catechism states: “In the light of the Gospel, the Church teaches that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it attempts against the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and works with determination for its abolition throughout the world.”
President Biden imposed a temporal moratorium on federal executions during 2021. Donald Trump has promised to annul it.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, Executive Directress of the Catholic Mobilization Network, a national Catholic organization that seeks the abolition of the death penalty in the United States, said: “We know concretely that the President who will take office at the end of January has a history of executions and has committed himself to broaden and accelerate them once again, so this is quite an urgent moment.”
Pope Francis made a special appeal for the abolition of the death penalty in the Bull of Induction of the Jubilee 2025, Holy Year whose beginning will coincide with President Biden’s last month in office. It is relevant that the celebration of a Jubilee Year has its roots in the Old Testament’s practice as a special time to reestablish appropriate relations with God and with others.
The Pontiff stressed the call to eliminate the death penalty in the context of this Jubilee Year: “In all parts of the world, believers must unite to exact worthy conditions for the imprisoned, respect for their human rights and, above all, the abolition of the death penalty, disposition that is contrary to the Christian faith and that eliminates all hope of pardon and rehabilitation.”
Vaillancourt Murphy has echoed this message: “We are approaching the historic Year of the Jubilee 2025, a biblical tradition whose history is linked to the liberation of captives, the liberation of the oppressed and the achievement of balance in society. We are in an urgent moment. It’s a historic year that can have a particular relevance for a President whose Catholic faith is something important for him. This Jubilee Year puts the accent on a time to rebalance and to commit again to justice and mercy.”
Given that the United States was one of the five countries with the most executions carried out in 2023, along with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, Vaillancourt Murphy pointed out: “If President Biden took this step, it would have repercussions not only in the United States, but in the whole world. The Jubilee Year is the perfect moment for this Catholic President to take this historic step.”
